#memoirs

My only fantasy about writing was that in my old days, after directing many masterpieces, I would write my memoirs. ↗

— Manuel Puig

#after #days #directing #fantasy #i

I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life. ↗

— Sally Ride

#haven #i #life #made #memoirs

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#imagination #lack #make #memoirs #people

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that's Memoirs. ↗

— Will Rogers

#did #done #down #good #good things

I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book. ↗

— Gloria Swanson

#book #divorce #far #given #i

I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time. ↗

— John Major

#i #long #long time #memoirs #time

When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios. ↗

— Margery Allingham

#truth #life

Brighton Beach does not look, smell, or sound like Russia. It's a parody of Russia at best, something as different from the real thing as a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Yes, they sell Russian food on Brighton Beach, and Russian books and videos, and Russian clothes, and there are Russian restaurants and Russian nightclubs, and everybody speaks Russian, but the Russianness of the place is so concentrated that it feels ridiculously exaggerated. Everything Russian on Brighton Beach is too Russian, far more Russian than in real Russia. This is what happens all over Brooklyn. From the Scandinavians of Bay Ridge to the Chinese of Sunset Park, Brooklyn's immigrants go to ridiculous extremes to re-create their homelands only to end up with a vulgar pastiche. ↗

— Lara Vapnyar

#brooklyn-was-mine #essays #memoirs #food

Conformity is deformity ↗

— Sharon Desruisseaux

#cleopatra #egypt #historical #historical-fiction #isis

You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New York, spills peanuts all over the place (back when the cheapskate airlines at least gave you peanuts), and tells you about what his boss did to him the day before. You know how your eyes glaze over when you hear a story like that? That’s because of the way he’s telling his story. You need a good way to tell your story. ↗

— Adair Lara

#writing-advice #writing-craft #writing-craft